Murkowski rules out switching parties to join Dems
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Friday that she was committed to remaining a Republican, calling liberal aspirations that she might switch parties and hand Democrats an edge in the evenly divided Senate “a dream by some that will not materialize.”
Murkowski, a critic of former President Donald Trump who has indicated she is open to convicting him at his impeachment trial for his role in encouraging the violent mob that stormed the Capitol, had raised questions about whether she might defect when she told a home state newspaper that she had doubts about her place in the party.
Days after the Jan. 6 assault, she told The Anchorage Daily News that, “if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Friday, Murkowski expressed the same sentiment but added that she had “absolutely no desire to move over to the Democratic side of the aisle — I can’t be somebody that I’m not.”